Shower bath curtain



June 24, 1958 v R. L. TICHENOR 2,840,160

SHOWER BATH CURTAIN Filed Jan. 26, 1954' 2 Sheets-Sheet 1 FIE'1 1 Q 1- II n INVENTOR RAYMOND L. TIOHENOR June 24, 1958 I R. L. TICHENOR SHOWER BATH CURTAIN File d Jan. 26, 1954 2 Sheets Sneet 2 INVENTOR. RAYMQND l .-T|CHENQR Mi, n-8W ATTORNEYS SHOWER BATH CURTAIN Raymond L. Tichenor, Alameda, Calif.

Application January 26, 1954, Serial No. 406,133

1 Claim. (Cl. 160-349) The present invention relates to improvements in shower bath curtains of the kind adapted to be suspended from a rod or other support disposed above the edge of a bathtub or a stall shower and is a continuation in part of my patent application Serial Number 296,373, filed June 30, 1952, now adandoned.

It is a matter of common experience that shower bath curtains have an annoying tendency to blow about during the operation of the shower bath, such that the shower water will not be confined to the tub or stall but is permitted to reach the adjacent floor. Various devices, many involving the employment of conventional suction cups secured in various ways to edges of a shower curtain, have been proposed for holding such a curtain in place, but all prior devices of this nature have had deficiencies important enough to prevent any widespread adoption of them.

Prior devices employing conventional suction cups attached to a shower curtain to hold it in place during showering have required the user either to carefully peel away each suction cup individually from the wall of the tub or the stall or to risk tearing the curtain or breaking the cups away from the curtain, leaving them adhering to the tub wall thereby destroying the usefulness of the curtain. This is true because of the strong suction exerted by conventional cups when pressed against a smooth surface. Since it is the habit of shower users to merely push the curtain back along its rod in exiting from a shower bath, and since this cannot safely be done with prior curtains so equipped, such devices have not been attractive to purchasers.

Efforts to adapt such prior devices to the habits of the users of them, as just described, have consisted of the provision of various means for strengthening the bond be tween the cups and the curtain and the concomitant employment of strong curtain materials. Examples of such efforts are found in devices employing strong straps carrying conventional suction cups at one end and stitched into seams of the curtain at the other end; metal eyelets fixed in the curtain materialfor retaining such cups; metal bars secured to curtains and carrying such cups suspended therefrom; and heavy backing strips interposed between the curtain and such suction cups. All of these arrangements add very materially to the cost of manufacture. of curtains so equipped, in addition to requiring the user of them to exert considerably greater force than he is accustomed to employ in pushing the curtain back along its supporting rod preparatory to leaving the shower bath.

The present invention provides for the first time a restrainable shower bath curtain of the suction cup equipped type which may be manufactured of relatively light material and to which its suction cups may be afiixed by simple means adapted to economical quantity production nited States Patent yet which may be handled by the user in the manner of an ordinary shower curtain without risk of either tearing the curtain or separating it from the suction cups.

The invention is based upon the principle that so long as the bond between each suction cup and the curtain is Patented June 24, 1 958 from desired position by the air movements caused by shower operation.

This principle is applied, according to the present invention, by so reducing the strength of'both of these bonds to an extent sufiicient to permit a simple heat fusion bond to be employed to secure each cup to the curtain; it being found that the proportionate reduction of the strength of the suction bond leaves the latter still sufficiently strong to restrain the curtain against unwanted dislodgment, and employing a sulficient number of such suction cups so that the ratio of the total area of the cavities of the cups to'the area of the curtain is of the order of one to five thousand.

In the preferred embodiment of the invention disclosed herein, reduction of the strength of the suction bond betweenthe suction cup and the Wall against which it is pressed is efiected by designing the cup so that it will retain sufiicient air within its cavity to reduce the strength of the suction bond to the desired extent even when firmly pressed against the wall of a tub or shower. This embodiment is described in detail in the following specification with reference to the accompanying drawings, in which:

Figure 1 is a cross-section through a suction cup and a shower curtain. to which it has been attached, with a fragmentary showing of the dies used in the thermoplastic bonding process; 1

Figure 2 is a bottom plan view of a section taken along line 2-2 of Figure l;

Figure 3 is a perspective view of a tub type shower equipped with a curtain embodying the present invention;

Figure 4 is a fragmentary view in section of the edge of the tub and of the curtain;

Figure 5 is an enlarged sectional view of a suction cup attached to the curtain; and

Figure 6 is an enlarged sectional view of the cup and curtain of Figure 5 showing the cup in adhering relation to the wall of a tub. 7

As shown in Figure 1, the restrainable shower curtain of the present invention comprises a flexible sheet 10 of water impervious material which, if the maximum advantages of the invention are to be realized, should be a thermoplastic resin compatible with the material of which the suction cups are made so as to permit the latter to be secured to it by heat fusion. The sheet 10 is adapted to be suspended from a rod A by means such as rings B in the well known manner; the rod being disposed in approximate alignment with the inner edge of a bathtub so as to form a curtain enclosing the tub cavity into which a shower head is adapted to discharge. This arrangement is such that, as shown in Figure 2, the lower edge of the sheet 10 hangs closely adjacent the inner edge of the tub and extends six to eight inches intothe tub cavity; preferably terminating short of the rounded portion adjacent the tube bottom.

Secured to the outer face of the sheet 10 adjacent its lower edge are a plurality of flexible, resilient suction cups 11, the form of which is shown in detail in terials are used and other means, such as an adhesion, are used to secure the cups to the sheet.

As shown in Figure 5, the suction cup 11, according to the present invention, is intentionally designedso'that 'it will retain sufficient air within its cavity when firmly pressed against the wall of a tub or showertsee Figure 6) for the purpose of reducing the strength of the suction bond ascompared to the suction bond normally'promaterial 10, as forexample to an'outer fold 10a of a hem 10b provided at the bottom edge of the material 10. Aflat face 14 thus is provided interiorly of the cup extending parallel to the base surface 15, with an edge wall 17 defining'in the manner shown, the sides and rim of the cavity 30. For the purpose of resisting deformation when the cup is firmly pressed against the wall of a tub or shower, the edge wall 17 is preferably arch shaped in cross-section, of slightly greater thickness than the rear wall defined by surfaces 14 and 15, and of such dimension in relation to the diameter of the rear wall that the cavity 30 will have a diameter of the order of four times its depth, whereby when the middle portion of ,flat face 14 of the rear wall contacts the tub surface 31 in the manner shown in Figure 4, only approximately half of the air will be expelled from the cavity 30;

In a specific embodiment ofvthe invention it has'been found satisfactory to use, for a 72 by 68 inch curtain of four gauge (approximately .004 of an inch) vinyl sheet provided with acne inch' bottom hem of double thickness, five such suction cups secured to'the bottom hem; one cup being'centrally located, one located fifteen inches from each end, and one located three inches from each end. Each cup used in this embodiment was seven-eights of one inch in over-allediameter and had rear and side Walls of a thickness of .090of an inch. The area of the interior cavity of each cup was approximately two-tenths of a square inch; the diameter being of the order of four times its depth of one-eighth inch. A larger curtain 90 by 68 inches, designed for tubs open at one end was provided with six such cups similarly spaced from the ends, with two cups twenty inches apart equidistant from the center instead of the single centrallylocated cup. Such arrangements have been found adequate toretain such curtains in place during shower operation. Larger numbers of such cups could be used without risk of separation of cups fromthe curtain, because whenconstructed according to the present invention each releases readily from the tub wall.

An example of a method, of heat welding such cups to such a curtain, which was employed in the specificembodiments referred to above, is shown in Figures 1. and 2. As shown in said figures; a cup 11 was placed with its concave side 17 upon a stationary metal die 13 having an upper end 19 in the form of a paraboloid from which projected a multitude of upwardly directed prongs 20 to the sheet.

that terminated within the same horizontal plane and which were arranged in concentric annular pattern, as best seen in Figure 2. After the cup was placed thereon in the described position and the area of the curtain 10 to which the cup was to be attached was placed upon the upwardly directed base surface of the cup, a levelling die 21 in the form of a metal-plate was lowered upon the sheet and the cup to hold the sheet tightly against the base surface of the cup and at the same time hold the cup with its concave surface tightly against the prongs 20 of the lower die. The two dies were then heated and the cup and curtain were thus'exposed to the heat of the two dies until the cup was securely and uniformly welded The dies may be heated, preferably automatically, in any convenient manner, such as by means of steam coils provided within said dies (not shown). Alternatively, dielectric heating methods may be used, in which case both dies are mounted in frames of insulating material 22 and 23, respectively, and a suitable source of radio frequency energy may be applied to the lower die as indicated at 24, While the upper die is grounded as indicated at 25.

With respect to the foregoing, it has been found that the suction bond of thevacuum so provided by a cup having a cavity of the described type and in which the walls thereof have the specified relation with respect to both diameter and thickness, will be moderate enough when used as described with a shower curtain to permit their immediate release by the user in the manner of an ordinary shower curtain without the risk of either tearing the curtain or separating the bond between it and the curtain, yet which when as few as five or sixsuch cups are used will be sutlicient to retain the curtain against dislodgment from desired position by the air movements caused by shower operation.

What is claimed is:

The combination with a shower curtain of the character described comprising a sheet of thermoplastic material, of a plurality of circular suction cups of a thermoplastic material fusibly compatible with the thermoplastic material of said curtain sheet, secured to said sheet solely by a fusion bond of each cup directly to one face of said sheet adjacent an edge thereof; each of said cups having a flat rear.wall and an arcuate edge wall, said flat rear wall being of sufficient flexibility, even when reinforced by fusion to said curtain, to insure that pressure against thecurtain opposite; the outside of said rear wall will bring the center portion of the inside of said rear wall into contact with a flat rigidsurface against which the cup is pressed before the other portions of the inner side ofsaid rear wall contact said fiat rigid surface; whereby expulsion of air from within said cup will be arrested while a substantial amount of air remains within said cup, and a suction bond formed bet-ween said cup and said flat rigid surface which is materially weaker than the fusion bond between said cup and said curtain.

References Cited in thefile of this patent UNITED STATES PATENTS 1,563,746 Hirsch et al. Dec. 1, 1925 7 2,148,401 Ellis Feb. 21, 1939 2,608,250 Meyer Aug. 26, 1952 2,642,248 Semon June 16, 1953 

